Jeremy Hunt: "Don't expect us to pay for your children"

Lovesthechaos. Thanks for the link.

Lovelymumma I would have answered your question some time back, but the computer crashed. I honestly don't know what you are talking about. Did I say I would deny hospital treatment to people. I said I was already paying for it! Please don't threaten me with your host of nurses, in your family, or you will force me to abandon the great NHS which I believe in, and go private! especially when I see a nurse called Ms.Lovelymumma.

Complimentary please google "The Duggar Family" and the "Quiverfull movement".

Actually I'll do it for you.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiverfull

www.duggarfamily.com/

There are many families like this and the movement is really taking off among fundamentalist christians. And it isn't only in the USA.

ISNT This 'exclusive Brethren' how many members does it have? They live in Plymouth, you're having a laugh, no Christian groups in Plymouth have 'trillions' of members having children do they? probably 200 at the most! Must google it, or perhaps you could and tell me the vast numbers of these people. I feel to be fair to you, you may be rather economic with the truth?

Riven the famous Tory politician was Cecil Parkinson who I think was the Tory party chairman and a complete bastard.

complimentary honestly you're not very good at this are you, you make yourself look a right plank.

We live in a part of the country which has a large population of Exclusive Brethren. They are a breakaway group of a sect called the Plymouth Brethren, who I think you are more likely to have heard of.

Made it up honestly that's pathetic. I don't like being called a liar TBH.

ISNT 'Christians having trillions of children' Please elaborate and tell me what town or planet you live on where CHRISTIANS are have millions of kids. I'm a Christian and would love to know where this group of people are, who are following the Bible so closely and 'going forth to multiply' you made it up! Good try!.... awaits reply while playing with rosary beads.

its quite logical to have children early if you are poor though - the age of death where I live varies by district from 65-80. needless to say it is directly related to house prices and relative wealth. so if you were statistically more likely to die 15 years early and waited til you were 32 and your daughter also waited til 32 you would only live to see one grandchild for one year. I'm sure it isn't consciously thought out that way but biologically it makes more sense to have them younger

the house price bubble was deliberately stoked up by loose credit and low regulation. The stock market was in the tank before the year 2001. Some artificial measures were taken to create an asset bubble and give the illusion of wealth to keep people spending. The dot com boom was created to inflate stock values and the housing boom was used to create an illusion of wealth. It was just a matter of time before the plug was finally pulled.

Riven - I totally agree, it is the house price explosion that has caused the massive change in circumstance.

I have a one bed flat in central(ish) London which cost 115,000 in 2001. It's now valued at 250,000. Absolutely nothing has changed in the area (if anything it has got slightly worse) and demand will have gone down not up as there are a ton of new build luxury flats in the area. Yet the price has still exploded, for no concrete reason that I understand.

But I also don't know what the solution is. Because if there is a proper house price crash, most of those who bought in the last 5 years will be in such negative equity that it will make more sense to go bankrupt and start again than it will to stay where they are with no prospect of ever clearing their debt.

So, either you chose to sacrifce all these people or you keep propping up the house prices with tax credits and housing benefit and all sorts. It's dead money as well - if everyone had little mortgages then they would have more spare cash to spend on maintaining the economy rather than just paying it into the equivilant of a long term non-access savings account.

I teach in a secondary school on an estate oop north which suffers very high levels of unemployment. There are a large number of girls within the school who see having children as a career choice, and go on to procreate as soon as they can. Having sat in a waiting room at the hospital with one of the girls I taught last year, I felt quite depressed at her statement "Well, I don't see how I'm expected to raise this baby on the amount I get." I have waited to the age of 32 to have my first child, having only just cleared the debt it cost me to qualify as a teacher... I am aware that this girl may be in the minority, or the school in which I teach is merely a one-off but from my own personal experience, girls planning to have multiple children in order to secure a future (because they know of noone with a job) is depressingly common.

On and on the religion / lots of kids thing I mentioned earlier that in my area there are strict religious communities of branches of christianity and judaism and they are the ones who are having trillions of children.

The house prices thing is true, that housing is no longer affordable the way it used to be. I bought a one bed flat in about 1997, it was what I would say was about the "right" price - 4 x salary for someone in their early 20s, in a nice part of London. Now it's 10 x that same salary IYSWIM. How many single young people starting out afford that? Now it's the price that a family should be paying for their home.

I don't see what you can do about it though without changing away from a capitalist/free market economy, and that's quite a big ask

On the subject of families only being supported for their first two children - does anyone think that this ideological position will be reflected in other benefits? I was thinking about free school meals this morning for eg.

Complimentary,I'll makesure I tell my 3 children not to pay for your treatment when you are old and ill in hospital,especially if they become nurses,which there are quite a few of in our family!

Riven - Agree the house price inflation has distorted things. I've been reading about the 'living wage' campaign lately and wonder if this isn't a better approach to equality than tax/benefits. Just wondering - no real opinion on it.

Mano - did you read the article and you understand the concept of statistically?

But why is it so easy in the UK for absent fathers to avoid their financial responsibility.

Here in Australia, your child support is taken from your salary at source (like your tax), and I believe that under some circs (arrears, disputes perhaps?) you are put on the airport watch list. There was a case a year or so ago about some hole who turned up to go on holiday to Bali and was told by Qantas sorry, no, you can't leave the country as you have an unpaid child support obligation.

Riven - Could the problem not be that wages do not properly reflect the cost of living? And CTC has allowed employers to get people (like your dh) at a bargain rate?

It's also naive to think that poor parenting skills are only evident in poor families

Btw - I'm not saying a blunt withdrawal of benefit is the solution (though I don't know what is).

But it is not right to actively encourage the poor to have large families.

PosieParker whispered
" aren't people born into low economic status more likely to end up there?"

As no one seems to have picked up on it I'll shout

THE EDUCATIONAL OUTCOME FOR CHILDREN FROM THE POOREST FAMILIES IS FAR BEHIND THAT OF AVERAGE CHILDREN

It's naive to think you alleviate poverty by just giving poor people money. A system which encourages those with poor parenting skills to have children (and fails to provide parent and child with adequate support) is just cruel.

These rich people really do believe that most of us are a waste of space and that we are consuming the earth's resources and wasting them. They think they are entitled to these resources and we just get in the way. That is why every single government, run by the powerful and for the benefit of teh powerful, is green and talks about "sustainability" and "depletion of resources". They even go as far as telling us we should cut out meat because cows' methane is causing global warming. Every powerful leader is behind the same message. The thinkers behind it are Eton educated Porritt and even more sinister figures like Professor Peter Singer, a green animal rights eugenecist, who says that mentally handicapped children are worth less than animals.